MANY monuments have been built in honour of the man Bola Tinubu. He is
acclaimed as the political genius of our times who not only engineered
the taming of the PDP juggernaut, he caged it and confined it to the
backwaters of Otuoke. Since the APC defeat of the PDP in the
presidential election, Tinubu the tactician has been feted, celebrated
and praised to high heavens. But all these encomiums have proved to be
highly exaggerated.
The truth of the matter is that Tinubu, the veritable Jagaban of
Borgu, is a master of political illusion. He is remarkable for the
distinction of characteristically pulling defeat out of the jaws of
putative victory. He mid-wifed the birth of the APC, only to be shut
out of its vice-presidential sweepstakes. He engineered APC”s victory
at the centre, only to see his arch-enemies take over the posts of
Speaker and Senate President in the National Assembly. He piggy-backed
Buhari to the presidency, only to be shut out of a say in the
president’s cabinet nominees.
Tinubu is called the National Leader of the APC when there is no such
post in the party’s Constitution. When a critical meeting of APC
bigwigs was called to address the party’s imbroglio in the National
Assembly, the “National Leader” could not attend because, in actual
fact, he is not even a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC)
of the party.
Sowing and reaping
In 2011, Tinubu was hailed for cutting his nose to spite his face.
The PDP nominated his kinswoman, Mulikat Akande, as Speaker of the
National Assembly. However, Tinubu conspired with recalcitrant PDP
party-members to frustrate the plans of their party for his South-west
homestead. Instead, he engineered the election of Sokoto’s Aminu
Tambuwal, an APC wolf in PDP sheep’s clothing, as Speaker.
In 2015, Tinubu received payback for these shenanigans again to the
detriment of his native South-West. The same Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto
he schemed into the position of Speaker in 2011, repaid Tinubu by
frustrating his efforts to install his Lagos acolyte, Femi Gbajabiamila,
as Speaker in 2015. Taking a leaf straight out of Tinubu’s 2011
playbook, Tambuwal conspired with opposition PDP members to install
another Northern PDP turncoat, Yakubu Dogara, as Speaker.
Tinubu’s comeuppance here is particularly savage because it was
actually Gbajabiamila who reportedly convinced Tinubu that Tambuwal
would readily act as traitor to his PDP party in 2011. It is therefore
veritable poetic justice that the same Tambuwal became an equally ready
tool of the PDP in the frustration of Gbajabiamila’s ambitions and the
interests of Tinubu and the APC in 2015.
Moreover, Tinubu was repaid for his 2011 manipulations with
interest. The same treachery employed to Tinubu’s political
disadvantage in the House was also duplicated in the Senate. Bukola
Saraki, another PDP turncoat, refused to abide by the dictates of APC
Central, firmly controlled by Tinubu’s ACN. He snatched the position of
Senate President without official APC approval, but with the support of
the opposition PDP. So doing, he sidelined both Tinubu’s first-choice
of George Akume, as well as his second-choice of Ahmed Lawan.
Crumbled cookie
Just as Tinubu was licking his wounds at the denial of his “rightful
inheritance” in the National Assembly after the APC victory at the
polls, the news came that his political cookie had equally crumbled at
Aso Rock. It had been popularly alleged that Tinubu’s portion in
Buhari’s presidency would not be limited to the appointment of his
political godson as vice-president, but would also include the
allocation of no less than nine choice ministerial nominees to the
discretion of the Jagaban of Borgu.
But by the time Buhari unfurled his ministerial list two weeks ago,
the alleged dedicated slots had shrunk to zero. Many of us had warned
in the heady days of the formation of the APC that those insistent that
power must return to the North would be determined to checkmate Tinubu
if and when the election was won. We warned Tinubu that even as he
cannot conceivably be accepted nationally to rule Nigeria as president,
even so can he not rule Nigeria by proxy. We warned him that the North
would never allow Buhari to be his Man Friday in Aso Rock.
However, Tinubu was too far gone to listen. It would now appear that
he even failed to take out insurance policies against such probable
eventualities.
But once elected, Buhari started a romance with Babatunde Fashola and
Kayode Fayemi designed clearly to sideline the Jagaban. While these
former governors were previously members of Tinubu’s inner-circle, they
had since run out of patience with the heavy handedness of their boss.
Therefore, during the election campaign, both of them campaigned for
Buhari above and beyond the call of party duty.
Fashola, in particular, was clearly fed up with being under Tinubu’s
political shadow. In the struggle for who would be the APC governorship
candidate in Lagos State, Tinubu did not allow Fashola to choose his
successor, in the ignoble tradition of Nigerian governors. While
Fashola favoured Dapo Sasore, the former Attorney General of Lagos
State, Tinubu railroaded in Akinwunmi Ambode as the APC candidate.
While again, in the ignoble tradition of Nigerian politics, governors
promptly transform themselves into Senators when their term as governor
ends, this option was closed off to Fashola because Tinubu had already
installed his wife as the Senator from Fashola’s constitutency. The
only option left for Fashola politically was presidential ministerial
appointment and, even there, Tinubu had put up a road block against him.
Tinubu prefers to nominate political nonentities for higher office in
the South-West, so that he would be the only Iroko tree in the forests
of the region. Therefore his candidates for ministerial appointment
from Lagos were his little nationally-known former commissioners, Wale
Edun and Yemi Cadosso, who could pose no threats whatsoever to his
ascribed South-West political supremacy.
Alarm bells:But when Fashola and Fayemi accompanied
Buhari to the G7 meeting in Germany in June 2015, alarm bells started
ringing in Tinubu’s Bourdillon Road mansion in Lagos. This was clearly a
signial that these former governors were intent on by-passing the
official godfather of the South-West by applying to be members of
Buhari’s kitchen cabinet on their own recognisance.
The Tinubu brigade would have none of this. Therefore, a campaign of
calumny was launched to cut Fashola in particular to dimunitive size.
Suddenly, the “memo” was sent out implying the former governor had
developed political leprosy. When two books were launched
simultaneously celebrating his achievements as governor, none of his APC
colleagues from Lagos dared to attend for fear of entering the bad
books of the dreaded Jagaban.
In order to nail the coffin on Fashola’s ministerial aspirations, it
was leaked to the press that a whopping 78 million naira of public money
was spent on the construction of his personal website. 139 million
naira was also alleged to have been spent on two boreholes constructed
in Government House, Lagos during his tenure. The intention here was to
ensure that Fashola becomes ineligible for ministerial consideration on
grounds that he would not pass Buhari’s anti-corruption integrity test.
However, Buhari was apparently unimpressed by these political
shenanigans. When his list of ministerial nominees were unfurled,
Fashola and Fayemi featured prominently among Buhari’s “first eleven.”
None of Tinubu’s nominees made the list. Other nominees from the
South-West were precisely the kind of people Tinubu did not want in
Buhari’s team; people who would not be indebted to Tinubu but to
Buhari.
While Buhari completely ignored Tinubu’s candidates, he included that
of another South-West bigwig. Obasanjo’s favourite-son, Prince
Olagusoye Oyinlola, former governor of Osun State, was included in
Buhari’s list. Thereby, the president asserted the saliency of
Obasanjo’s South-West influence in Aso Rock over that of the Jagaban.
He even pointedly appointed Obasanjo as his special envoy to
Guinea-Bissau.
This is certainly not what Tinubu bargained for when he decided to
pitch his tent with Buhari and the APC. If he were to be furthermore
overlooked in the appointment of BOT chairman of the APC, the
marginalisation of the Jagaban in the post-election APC would be
complete.
Comeuppance: Some of us saw this coming. In the
heady early days of the APC coalition, we warned that Tinubu would be
used and dumped. But we were labelled as PDP lapdogs and charlatans.
That is why I say today: let no one cry for Bola Tinubu.
Anyone who hears Tinubu’s recent vicious attack on Saraki would
realise these are the tokens of a frustrated man. Tinubu could not
attack the President, therefore he poured all his venom on the Senate
President. He accused him of indiscipline and disloyalty; the very
things he celebrated in the PDP rebels who joined forces with him
against their party in 2011.
Face saving device
The recent declaration that Buhari appointed Babachir Lawal as
Secretary to the Government of the Federation at the instance of Tinubu
is a face-saving device. The Tinubu camp forgot to tell us this until
now. At the time of new SGF’s appointment, all the uproar was about the
Northern lopsidedness in Buhari’s choices.
Observing the sidelining of Tinubu by Buhari, Senator Femi Okunroumu
said: “I am having a good laugh. This is what I expected. In any case,
Tinubu is stretching his luck too far as he wants to dictate who will
rule Nigeria. Tinubu’s wings need to be clipped. With the ministerial
list, Tinubu has been dumped. He should not just be dumped, he should be
disgraced.”
On his part, Afenifere chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, said: “APC is
not a party; it is a gang of people whose sole aim was to remove Dr.
Goodluck Jonathan as president. In a real party, you share the spoils
of office before elections not after elections. This is what is
happening in APC. We warned our people, but they failed to listen.”
In the new politics of today’s APC, it is better to be the enemy of
Bola Tinubu than to be his friend. The enemies of Tinubu become Senate
presidents; they become Speakers of the House of Representatives; they
become ministers of the Federal government. But the friends of Tinubu
are sent to Siberia.
The Jagaban of Borgu himself has been slain politically upon his high places. How are the mighty fallen!
